Many times, the only experience companies have in emergency response plans is from previous exercises. There are a few basic design features that anyone can apply to really test a company’s emergency response manualand corporate knowledge.

Many companies rely on the ‘tabletop exercise’ where everyone sits in the same room, often with the same script or checklist and reads together in a linear checklist fashion.

The problem with this type of exercise is that is does not take into account the complexities of a real world emergency or the response needed. The next level of complexity is the ‘task oriented/scripted inject’ exercise, where people are required to give and receive information and perform tasks as they would in a real world emergency response.